A new stable release of Chrome: safer and snazzier

Chrome is now more secure, thanks to enhancements to our Safe Browsing technology. In addition to protecting you from certain malware and phishing websites, Chrome now warns you before downloading some types of malicious files. We’ve carefully designed this feature so that malicious content can be detected without Chrome or Google ever having to know about the URLs you visit or the files you download.

Chrome also now gives you more control over the data that websites store on your computer. This includes Flash Player’s Local Shared Objects (LSOs), which were previously only manageable using an online settings application on Adobe’s website. We’ve worked closely with Adobe to integrate Flash LSO deletion directly into Chrome, making it easier for you to manage your online privacy.

Finally, Chrome’s graphics capabilities continue to improve. This release includes support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, which means you’ll get a snazzier experience in some web pages and web apps that choose to implement 3D effects. To see hardware-accelerated 3D CSS in action, check out this Chrome Experiment on Windows Vista / Mac OS X 10.6 or above, featuring clips from Aardman Studio’s “Shaun the Sheep.” In this simple experiment, you can rotate the video, scale it up and down, toggle the reflection on and off, and activate a rotating carousel of videos. Of course, you can also just enjoy the animated antics of a few funny animals.

As always, Chrome users will be automatically updated to this new version of Chrome in the coming days. As Chrome continues executing on its six-week release schedule, we’ve got many more improvements coming your way. Check back in a few weeks for our next beta channel release!